Hey folks! I'm finally back after taking a prolonged break to focus on my studies, family and health. I'm excited to be sharing shots like this one from my newly released 2019 calendar which includes landscape and astro shots from my travels this year. It's available at the link in my bio and ships worldwide. Just make sure to order soon if you're an international customer to ensure it ships in time for the holidays. By popular request, I've also added location information for each image. So if you're wondering where the heck an image like this was taken, (one of Jupiter's moons, perhaps?) you'll now know it was taken in Bisti Badlands, New Mexico. Speaking of which, thank you to @brockoli6 for recommending this spot. If any of you ever make it out in this direction, I'd highly recommend checking out this area. Just make sure to bring a GPS with coordinates marked for your car and the prominent geological features (available online.) Oh and extra headlamp batteries, finding your way back in the dark out here is kinda spooky. I have to be completely transparent and say that I wasn't comfortable with staying out here by myself until the moon set, so I composited the milky way from a different night and used this moonlit foreground. Really hate to do it, but I had a vision for this shot and wanted to make it work. Hopefully next year I can do it legit.
Settings ⚙️ | f/4 | (sky): 4 minutes tracked (foreground): 30 seconds | (sky): ISO 800 (foreground): ISO 400
Gear 📷 | Sony A7iii | Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 | iOptron Skytracker Pro | Feisol CT-3401 Carbon Fiber Tripod | RRS BH-40 Ballhead
#sonyalpha#sonyimages#nightphotography#astrophotography#night_excl#theIMAGED#longexposure_shots#moodygrams#ig_color#visualsoflife#agameoftones#wildernessculture#rsa_night#global_exposures#milkyway#stunnersoninsta#earth_shotz#earthpix#feedbacknation#newmexico#bistibadlands#newmexicotrue

1k81

3 months ago

I'm missing nights like these out on the open road, chasing light, storms and stars across state lines. These past few weeks I've been struggling to keep my head above water with the classes I'm taking at college. I've been dying to dive into editing shots from my road trip, and I finally had a few hours to sit down and work on a photo a few days ago. I decided to work on this Milky Way shot taken at the Mt Rose Summit heading towards Lake Tahoe. I had originally planned to shoot down at the lake, but smoke from all the California fires had ruined the visibility. Along the drive back towards Reno, I noticed the sky was clearing up at higher elevations. I looked for a spot where the road curved towards the milky way, and after waiting an hour for the perfect car to come through, I got my shot. It's not a perfect line-up, but it's the best I could find. Hope you guys enjoy it!
(Technical background) this is a 7 image median stack for noise reduction for the sky frames (aligned and stacked in PS) and a single darker, more closely focused shot for the foreground car trails. Blended using layer masks and color range selection.
Settings ⚙️ | f/2.8 | (sky): 20 seconds (foreground): 30 seconds | (sky): ISO 5000 (foreground): ISO 500
Gear 📷 | Sony A7iii | Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 | Feisol CT-3401 Carbon Fiber Tripod | RRS BH-40 Ballhead
#sonyalpha#bealpha#sonyimages#nightphotography#astrophotography#night_excl#theIMAGED#longexposure_shots#moodygrams#ig_color#visualsoflife#agameoftones#wildernessculture#rsa_night#global_exposures#stunnersoninsta#earth_shotz#earthpix#feedbacknation#astrophotography_#wildcalifornia#visitcalifornia#tahoe#tahoenorth#renotahoe#reno#seirra

2k133

4 months ago

I'm finally back in the Bay Area after being on the road for nearly a month. I met so many awesome people and had some pretty unforgettable experiences on my journeys. My final destination was Sequoia National Park where I visited some friends from a camp I taught photography at last year. The camp is conveniently located only 3 miles away from a gorgeous 8,100ft mountain peak with an incredible view of Sequoia and King's Canyon national parks. I made frequent trips up to the peak to scout compositions for the Perseids Meteor Shower. During one visit, the smoke from nearby wildfires was so intense that it blanketed the surrounding central valley cities such as Fresno and almost completely blocked out their light pollution. It was the clearest I had ever seen the milky way from that part of California, so I spent the night up there capturing it. A few nights later I captured the meteor shower from the same spot. Since the Perseids peaked late in the night, I couldn't capture the Milky Way facing in this direction. I made the difficult decision to layer the meteor photos over the milky way shot I captured earlier in the week. I tried to do as little alteration to the position and size of the meteors as possible to preserve realism. Regardless of whether this photo should be classified as true photography or digital art, I had a lovely time hanging out with friends under the stars and this picture is a reflection of my fond memories of that experience. Would love to hear your thoughts on the classification of photography and digital art.
Settings ⚙️ | f/2.8 | 20 seconds | ISO 8000
Gear 📷 | Sony A7iii | Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 | Feisol CT-3401 Carbon Fiber Tripod | RRS BH-40 Ballhead
#sonyalpha#sonyimages#nightphotography#astrophotography#night_excl#theIMAGED#longexposure_shots#moodygrams#ig_color#visualsoflife#agameoftones#wildernessculture#rsa_night#global_exposures#stunnersoninsta#earth_shotz#earthpix#feedbacknation#astrophotography_#perseidmeteorshower#wildcalifornia#visitcalifornia#kingscanyon#sequoianationalpark#sfgate#nbcbayarea#abc7now

5k149

4 months ago

I finally managed to capture some decent milky way shots this past week despite the smoke and crazy storms which seem to be following me. This image of Zion was tricky to tackle due to the conditions at the time. Albeit a challenge, I'm glad I had the opportunity to work through these hurdles and figure out how to shoot astro in less than ideal conditions. Smoke, light pollution, an approaching storm, and the rising moon are just a few of the elements in this shot that I had to work with, but I think they each contributed their own unique aspects to the shot. For those interested, this image is comprised of 9 shots assembled in 2 main groups. For the foreground group, I shot 2 pictures shortly after the moon rose, and assembled them as a vertical panorama. For the sky, I took 7 pictures back to back shortly before the moon got above the horizon. These 7 shots were aligned, stacked and averaged to reduce noise. It's been difficult for me to get a good hold of milky way editing after taking such a long break from it, but once I get back on my game I'll have plenty of astro images to share with you all. Enjoy the new moon y'all, don't let crap conditions get in the way of taking an adventure and trying to capture something. Good luck and happy shooting!
Settings ⚙️ | f/2.8 | (foreground) 5 minutes (sky) 20 seconds | (foreground) ISO 500 (sky) ISO 4,000
Gear 📷 | Sony A7iii | Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 | Feisol CT-3401 Carbon Fiber Tripod | RRS BH-40 Ballhead
#nightphotography#astrophotography#night_excl#theIMAGED#longexposure_shots#moodygrams#ig_color#visualsoflife#agameoftones#wildernessculture#rsa_night#global_exposures#stunnersoninsta#earth_shotz#earthpix#feedbacknation#astrophotography_#visitutah#zion#nationalparkgeek#sonyimages#sonyalpha

Sometimes it takes a bit of adventure to rekindle your passion for photography. These past few weeks I've been on a mission to get over my creative block by shooting new things and photographing areas I've never explored before. I'm currently in the New Mexico desert exploring the unique badlands and challenging myself to find compositions in some very remote areas. Earlier this month I headed up to the mountains seeking some more unique photography opportunities and I walked away with some of my favorite images from this year including this one. I went up with the goal of doing climbing photography, but when a pyrotechnic and archer approached me asking if I wanted to photograph some of the steel wool arrows they had left over from their 4th of July event, I jumped at the chance to get a truly unique milky way image. This shot was not bracketed, all the exposure information was captured in a single image. It felt rewarding to put my technical knowledge to use in order to achieve this shot with very little room for error. Can't wait to share what else I get. Good luck to anyone out there who's trying to overcome a creative block. Try to challenge yourself with photographing new things or exploring new areas. But most importantly, have fun!!
(Oh also please don't try this at home, leave fireworks to the professionals)
Settings | f/2.8 | 15 seconds | ISO 3200
Gear | Sony A7iii | Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 Loxia | Feisol CT-3401 Carbon Fiber Tripod | RRS BH-40 Ballhead | Off camera continuous light provided by Protec headlamp
#sonyalpha#zeisscameralenses#loxia#sonya7#sonyimages#nightphotography#astrophotography#night_excl#theIMAGED#longexposure_shots#moodygrams#ig_color#visualsoflife#agameoftones#wildernessculture#rsa_night#global_exposures#stunnersoninsta#earth_shotz#earthpix#feedbacknation#wildcalifornia#dreamworldimages#reflectiongram

4k155

6 months ago

Patience, planning, knowledge, and a whole lot of luck. That's what was required to get this shot yesterday morning. I've been trying to get this lineup of the Milky Way above shark fin cove for a while, but as any astro shooter can tell you, conditions along the coast don't often work in your favor. Whether it's cloud coverage, the phase of the moon, the marine layer, the humidity, wind speeds, and sometimes just the temperature, there's a multitude of different conditions which affect your ability to photograph the milky way. Everything finally lined up to allow me to get this shot, with the added bonus of some spectacular air glow which caused the sky to dance with green shimmering light. Fog rolling in from the east blocked a fair amount of light pollution from nearby cities, causing the milky way to be every more vibrant. I was waiting for the milky way to line up in this position above the shark fin stack at 3am, and when I saw the fog rolling in quickly I knew I had a very short window of time to capture the data I needed for this picture. The sky is composed of 16 minutes of exposures captured on an iOptron Skytracker lent to me by @louiskchan. During the last exposure I could already see the stars starting to fade from the quickly advancing fog. I frantically halted the star tracker and set my remote to capture a 5 minute exposure of the beach and rocks below, praying that it would finish before the fog came in. Less than 10 minutes later, the fog had completely engulfed the coast. I feel so fortunate to have been able to get this shot, and it's certainly one of my favorite astro images I've ever taken.
Settings | Manual Exposure | f/3.5 | ISO 800 | foreground: 5 minutes, sky: 4 minutes, 4 exposures stacked
Gear | Sony A7 | Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 | iOptron Skytracker Pro
#sonyalpha#zeisscameralenses#loxia#sonya7#sonyimages#nightphotography#astrophotography#night_excl#theIMAGED#longexposure_shots#moodygrams#ig_color#visualsoflife#agameoftones#wildernessculture#rsa_night#global_exposures#stunnersoninsta#earth_shotz#earthpix#feedbacknation#abc7now#sfgate#nbcbayarea#santacruz#visitcalifornia#wildcalifornia#wildbayarea